I miss the days when $500 could build a “console killer”
These days its like 1500. But you still get all the advantages like being able to do whatever you want with it like using productive software to actually do work. Streaming, editing, rendering, 3D modeling or printing, game dev, etc
You will also most likely still make that difference back over the cycle of one console generation through better game deals and no subscription fees for online play.
Also: INDIE GAMES 🎉✨
Because getting your game published in Sonys or Microsofts store is horrible afaik.
For Xbox its a little bit easier since they launched ID@xbox and pushed it the last few years. Not perfect, but way better than Sony
I’m still a PC player through and through, but I will say that the game subscriptions that give you access to AAA games (albeit sometimes a bit after launch) is pretty enticing. Obviously you get better sales and whatnot through Steam, but not having to shell out 50-70 dollars for a new game is pretty cool.
You didn’t hear? That shit is getting nerfed.
My roommate mentioned there was a price increase recently. It is pretty pricey.
It is nowhere near 1500.
More like 800.
For a nice PC that will last you a while 1100 (for like a 9600 + 9060XT)
I would say a console killer has to outperform a current gen console. A Xbox Series X has a GPU equivalent to something between a 9060XT and a 9070XT. So yeah in total 1100€ is probably gonna get you something comparable.
Every guide I’ve seen says even a 9060XT 16gb is very overkill compared to consoles.
You don’t have to justify buying a PC to your mum and dad because it can do Word anymore lol
That was a brief period when consoles were way over priced for the components they had.
That period repeats every 3-5 years approximatly towards the end of a generation but before the new generation is announced.
We’re at that point now. Hard to believe, but the PS5 has been out for five years now.
The reason it’s not happening this time is because Moore’s Law is dead. The original formulation was that cost of integrated components would be cut in half every x months. The value of x changed around over the years, but settled on 24. That cost factor is gone and probably won’t come back without a major breakthrough.
There are improvements in the size of integrated components (which often gets mistakenly labeled as Moore’s Law), but they aren’t getting cheaper anymore.
Ps5 sets my record for most dead joysticks, followed by the Nintendo Switch joycon disaster.
PS4 I had a few controllers die, but that was parts physically breaking.
PS3 I never lost a controller.
I have to go back to N64 for any other broken controllers where the sticks die or buttons break.
PS3 I had to get a new controller, but only because the dog ate the analog sticks lmao. Still using the Mini USB cable it came with 🫡
I had to replace the Micro USB port in two DS4s. I don’t even blame Sony for it, Micro USB is ass. I do blame them for them getting stick drift later though.
I don’t use the PS5 enough for the controller to break.
I’m 3/3 on ps5 controllers breaking.
I bought the pro controller when it came out and it hasn’t broken.
There was a generation where it was true at the launch of the console. That’s the period I’m talking about. Beating a 5 year old machine is hardly worth bragging about.
We are talking about price relative to performace, not performance in general.
But the cost of the hardware is anyways not so relevant when the price difference of the software easily makes up the difference.
Yes, and you could beat the price of a PS4 at release with a pc that performed the same. No other console generation had such bad price/performance
Nah it’s the GPU market. Cryptocurrency briefly exploded and now AI is sucking up all of the GPU manufacturing capacity. Back in 2019 I got my RX580 for $175. The AMD 9070 that released this year is a tier down from that and had an MSRP of $550, but an actual price more like $650. The sweet spot of value PC building has shifted from $750 to $1,500 in just a few years. Some of that is just general inflation that affects all parts, but roughly half of that increase is just from the GPU.
It’s impacting consoles too. Consoles uses to get cheaper over time, with both price drops to existing models and new, cheaper models being released (Sony’s Slim models, things like the Wii Family Edition and Wii Mini, the DSLite, etc). Looking at this generation… The original PS5 with a disc drive debuted at $500 in 2020. The “Slim” version also debuted at $500, and just got a price increase to $550. They released a PS5 Pro at $700, and just increased it to $750.
Nintendo is doing it too. The Switch was $300 for its entire life, and now that the Switch 2 is out consumers would typically expect a price cut to move the existing stock. Instead, Nintendo raised the price to $330. The OLED model went from $350 to $400, and the Lite went from $200 to $230.
And of course Microsoft is in on it too. It’s more complicated to write up since they have different storage variants of the Series S|X, but for example a Series S 512GB was $300 at launch (For some reason I remember seeing them for $250, but maybe that was a Black Friday sale or something). Now it’s $400!
Aren’t a lot of those price increases US centric due to asinine tariffs.
They’ve increased in other countries too. The PS5 digital edition costs £70 more today than it did at launch. In 2024 Sony increased the Japan price of all PS5 versions by ¥13,000.
The tariffs aren’t helping, but this has been a trend for years. The gaming console market is not very volatile- prices changes in the US usually happen once every few years, not every few months. The tariffs keep fluctuating all over the place and I would not be shocked if there are more pricing adjustments for consoles specifically next year.
You can blame crypto, you can blame AI, but when it comes down to it everything is worth what people are willing to pay. Clearly companies are pushing that further and further and people keep paying.
I recall it being a period of at least 10 years. A prior generation GPU would run about $150-200. The CPU/Mobo was the most expensive part
They still are
If they were, then you could build a PC for cheaper.
You can. But with used parts which feels like has always been the case.
I miss the days when $500 were enough to buy a console.
You still easily can with second hand components.
Thanks etherium
Yeah, but all those people buying wonky 2GB “PS4 equivalent” GPUs ended up pretty quiet when games later in the generation started using more and more VRAM.
The PS4 CPU was a joke, but it could use a lot of textures.
It really depends on whether you want the newest games with 128k graphics. I game on a 5 year old Thinkpad* and a first gen switch and am happy about it.
*granted, it was refurbished and still like 2700€, but the same laptop would be cheaper today
Wasn’t that just around the second half of the PS360 generation and the PS4 era until crypto blew up?
PCs were always pretty expensive since my childhood in the 1980s.
I want to say late 2000’s to early 2010’s was when my friends and I all built our own PCs for about $500.
Why do people keep reposting this shit?
Which console costs 400$?
Which reasonably price optimized PC costs 15k$?
Yes PCs are more expensive than consoles, but they also hold more value, are more versatile and have lower costs for the Games themselves.
To each their own, we’re alle gamers.
Fine, im in Canada and a ps5 costs $500 and a decent current gen gaming pc costs about $3000 where I am. And no I am no interested in building a pc anymore than I am building a ps5. So off the shelf you’re looking at a 1.5-2k pc just to match the ps5. So not 15k but easily triple the cost of a ps5.
What I like about consoles is that I know the game will always work on my console. I could buy a top end pc and it won’t play next years top games that well
Idk about the prices in canada but 3000 CAD shouldn’t give you a “decent current gen gaming pc”. This is already high end territory where you’re already burning money unnecessarly just to have the latest an greatest. For 2500 CAD you can get a prebuild 9070 XT + 7800X3D system (here). This system destroys the PS5 performance wise. I can get 240-300 FPS in the Finals while the PS5 can get a max of 120 FPS in performance mode with hits to the visual fidelity.
And yes a PS5 is 579 CAD as far as I can see, so a lot cheaper.
However as I stated a PC can run way more different games even without taking emulation into account. Furthermore on PS5 you have to pay 110 CAD/year to play online and PC games generally are cheaper than console games. So there is a significant amount of money you’ll save on the software.
Additionally you kinda are forced to buy a new console when the new generation arrives while I can use my PC for the newest games as long as I want to or the hardware just can’t handle it anymore.
And lastly a PC can also be used for non gaming stuff. You can even get use of the performance for 3D modeling, Video editing, running LLMs or whatever.
So as I stated before both have their use cases, a PC is definetly more expensive up front buy it also just offers more value. At the end it doesn’t matter and everyone can play games on the hardware they want to.
The console is subsidized by the games being more expensive. In the emd, the console is more expensive but you have it ready-to-use. While you have more choice on PC and can mod the games. To each their own.
The games are the same cost on pc for the same game.
For me it works better in the end, i pop it in and I know it’s gonna run. Also my library system has games, even on release day. And I use psplus, So I haven’t paid full for a game in a while.
You can also save a vintage console. PCs just get old
The real reason I’m better than the console plebs is that I still play multiplayer on twenty-year-old games.
Yeah, I just played CS 1.5 with my colleagues during a break. That shit just never gets old.
So old school of you to play 1.5 instead of 1.6
it hits different. dunno.)))) 1.6 feels corporate although not as much as latter iterations.
When 1.6 came out I was stubborn and refused to install Steam which was needed for it. But I eventually did and it eventually grew on me even though recoil and everything is a bit different. Still using my 22 year old steam account.
What console sells for 400 bucks?
Steam deck lol
its a pc tho 😭
Tim Cook: “I KNEW IT”
That’ll get you… The lowest storage tier Series S. Or a Nintendo Switch OLED. Yay.
This meme is from like 2014
PS5 (discless edition) did until the USD took an almighty shit.
Switch 1.
Where are you living where you can get a good console for $400?
2002
Secondhand PS5? I’m planning to get a used Switch 2 and some come for that price, and so seems the PS5.
I don’t know about second-hand PCs though.
thats how much i paid for a ps5
The consoles are “cheap” because the controllers, games, and subscription services are expensive.
It’s far, far, far cheaper to game on a PC in the long run. You can buy a pc capable of playing many games for as little as $300 (gmtek or similar micro pc sporting high performance amd cpu). If you want better graphics, you plug a gpu into that for $260 or so (Radeon 9060).
Steam is crazy cheap. Multiple sales a year, and if you don’t like a game you can get a full refund. Free AAA games every week as well from GOG, Epic, and rarely but surely, also Steam.
I’ll second this, actually. I used to hate on PC gaming for around a decade or so because it always seemed to prohibitively expensive to me compared to a console. But after building my very first PC with used parts off ebay for around 300-400€ in total, I think, I can confirm that it works really well overall.
Most of the games I’ve played so far perform really well, some even play on highest settings (and that’s with just a 1080 ti), and it’s a PC, so multitasking, office work, homework and whatnot are all possible. Running the OS and games off an SSD makes loading times quite fast compared to the PS5’s SSD, sometimes even faster.
And I haven’t spent a single Euro on games because of a plethora of 🏴☠️ options, which is possible on console depending on the console, but ultimately hinges on jailbreaking your console and voiding a potential warranty.
Overall, I’m very pleased with my PC experience right now. Ever since building the PC, I haven’t played on console, and that’s coming from someone who was playing on console pretty much exclusively since around 2017
Yes, Yes, this is true! (I say after spending multiple thousands on a gaming PC where this is absolutely not true).
My Xbox and PlayStation both came with a full normal controller, and console games are constantly on sale. I have absolutely no idea what you’re trying to get at here.
The point of the submission is that PC dumbfucks don’t know how to compare apples to apples. Console gaming is objectively superior due to the benefits of things like warranty, consistency, drivers, software, etc.
Software and driver issues like clicking update? Waiting for a reboot?
The same one year warranty that your PC has?
A controller is like 20 bucks. My PC can play the vast majority of games ever made out of the box, and for free if I’m willing to commit some crimes.
Ah yes, all the benefits of having the privilege to pay $10 a month to play online, only have enough storage space for like 5 games with no expansion options, barred access to the vast majority of games, and limited options for voice chat and input devices.
But I guess if you’re like 12 and all you play is 2k/madden/fifa/maybe COD and your parents are paying for it then it’s probably fine.
And yet none of those things applies to your superior. Interesting!
Nuh uhh!!1!
Correct. I’m just not an infant so I type normally.
Ok
Divide PC by 10 and add 300 dollars to console.
$400 console
The only thing that qualifies is an Xbox series S, even Switch 2 is $450 lmao.
Even funnier when you consider “PC” consoles like Steam Deck or Legion which gives you a even wider access to games, including exclusives thanks to emulation.
Hell Sony and Microsoft gave up on the console exclusive system because PC & Steam demonstrated the expanded market is worth the tradeoff when your console hardware is basically a computer.
That didn’t used to be the case even up to the PS4 when the hardware was still targeted for games like high VRAM, but that’s no longer the case.
It gets even better with Switch emulation because it was a glorified Android tablet that was already outdated on arrival, meaning you can play Switch games even on your phone thanks to ARM instruction pass-through techniques.
For $800 I think you can get a laptop that is more powerful than consoles, with similar GPU power, but you also get all the benefits of PC gaming. You can’t even mod most console games, which is reason enough to never buy a console. It’s just a way inferior way to game.
The $800 PC will also last longer
And you can install whatever os you want on it.
I can confirm that I got a laptop a couple years ago for $800 that has a RTX 4060, i7, and 32Gi of RAM. Beats a PS5 on paper, which is supposedly more equivalent to a RTX 2070, though games optimized for PS5 hardware make the difference more marginal.
Over 7 years, you’d have to pay $560 to play online on a PS5, assuming they don’t increase the price again. The cheapest PS5, without the disc drive (which is a bad decision if you like cheap games), costs $500.
You can easily build a PC more powerful than a PS5 for $1060, and that’s before you factor in cheaper games.
Over those 7 years, you get 252 free games for the PS5. Meaning the average value of those games has to be like 2.2 for the subscription to pay for itself
They’re not free, you had to pay to access them. The 252 are useless unless you play them and not just a half-dozen titles you like.
And once the sub stops you lose access to the games.
You know what you do get to keep? The games Epic gets giving out to bribe people into using their launcher. I’ve hoarded over 200 games from them, of which I’ve played maybe 30.
I’ve stopped because either it’s been trash games or it’s something that I’d rather play on steam.
Even their exclusives I decided to just wait on because the epic launcher blows.
I don’t think I’m in the majority but I think a non-negligible amount of people would pay a premium to not use epic.
I used some software they gave out, but otherwise I sit on the horde like a digital dragon.
some $2k beats a console and you get more games, cheaper price, and can do whatever you want with it
so if you’re already getting a computer, it just makes sense
This argument made more sense 20 years ago. Now there’s a lot more people who just don’t need a desktop.
But they need a console?
For a lot less than a desktop that does decent at gaming, yes.
idk about that. I have both and I still prefer using the desktop at home because I can get a much nicer performance out of it than connecting an external display to the laptop. Even for ordinary things like watching a YT video it makes a difference.
people might not need it, but no one who’s not a game developer needs a console either
“Needs” is a tricky word, here.
People want to play games. If they don’t need a desktop otherwise, it’s fine to choose a console for games. The number of people who need a desktop is a lot less than it was 20 years ago.
The only people who care about shit like this are the people who don’t play video games.
A lot of you don’t play video games.
Yeah, but I can use my PC for other things as well (I’m only using my PC for gaming)
I have editing stuff on my pc. Music, art, video.
But since i got my steam deck i realize how much i only used the pc for games.Eventually im going to Linux the thing. But I’m dreading the time sink that’ll be.
$400 plus a subscription for the privilege of playing online + some amount of money for a computer anyway
I gave up on PC gaming years ago. Turns out sitting on a coach and being 10’ ft away from a screen is way easier on my body and my eyes than being hunched over a desk 1’ away from a monitor.
Also no driver incompatibility bullshit. Most console games just work w/o me having to custom edit .ini or other files.
Have you used a PC since 1993? There have been new developments.
Also no driver incompatibility bullshit. Most console games just work w/o me having to custom edit .ini or other files
What century do you think this is?
last pc game i loaded was fallout 4 a few years ago. required like 2-3 hours to get it to run without crashing.
every old game i have from gog… all require custom mods to work. usually have to pull up a thread in the forums that has the solution and it’ always some custom edit. otherwise the game crashes repeatedly.
my ps5 can play the same old games and they just… work. zero effort required. zero crashes. also looks a lot nicer on a 60" OLED than on a 24" LED.
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You can plug a PC into a TV and even use Xbox and PS controllers if you like. Can have the PC auto start Steam in Big Screen mode so you’d seldom need to use a mouse+KB (trackballs or keyboards with trackpads are best in this scenario). Nothing wrong with console gaming though (well, besides supporting all the non-free software, locked-down systems, and shit companies; but most games you likely play are these as well).
I did this a while back. To be fair a “mini” ITX case is still relatively enormous, and I stopped upgrading it when graphics cards turned into magic beans for crypto-bros and got mega expensive.
that’s too much work. i have to setup controller profiles. i have to update drivers. i have to custome mod drivers or game files to get them to run.
my playstation… just fucking works. zero effort required. download game, play game. everything is done for me. my time goes into actually playing the game.
baffles me that y’all can’t see the mass appeal of that simplicity. not everyone is a linux nerd who wants to write custom drivers to play a game or load buggy emulators.
most peopel just want to play a game and enjoy it. not deal with endless bullshit.
There
Dam is this a copy pasta? 😅
You must have given up not years, but decades ago.
You actually had to edit files? Outside of me breaking things first (yay mods) I’ve only had to edit 1 file ever, and that was mass effect 1 on an old and laptop that was uhh… not suitable for the task given to it.
Guys, you don’t have to downvote someone because they have an experience that happens to be many standard deviations away from the mean. This is what consoles are for. Nintendo still shines for people like this :)
Don’t need to buy a new console every few years.
When getting to slow can upgrade single components.
Cost/performance is basically on par with consoles at the moment.
Completely ignores the fact that consoles are a type of computer and the gaming companies can not sell console + games at +/-0 or they’ll go out of business.The fuck you on about?
I over the last 15 years I’ve bought a total of 4 consoles. Ranging from $300 and below, and only 1 of those was an upgrade. The other 3 were different consoles to play different exclusives. We’ll just call it $1200 plus $150 for extra controllers and headsets. How much have you spent on your PC since you bought it?
I’ll chime in:
Since purchase at $1200 for a custom build in 2020, I’ve spent $500 upgrading storage and my video card for my PC. It can push most modern games at 80fps with ray tracing on low and all other settings on high. Leveraging frame-gen it can do 2k120.
It also holds about 5TB of music and movies, and hosts them on a server which I can access anywhere via a URL pointed to my tunnel.
It also has a DAW, an IDE, and a Nextcloud instance, also accessable anywhere.
$1700 in for total liberation from the tech overlords is worth it. The 500+ games in the steam family library are just a bonus.
That is an incredible price in 2020. The graphics cards alone were going for that much.
I went for a lower end GPU from the previous generation at the time, a GTX 1650 the types of game I was playing at the time accomadated that decision.
Games were free.
this guy gets it
May I ask you, how much did you spend on games?
I am cheap. I only buy games on sale or f2p. Wouldn’t be fair comparison. Probably less than $500 in 15 years.
I probably paid four times as much on PC games because I bought way more than I could ever play 🤔
But 1000 is probably what my initial build did cost.
800€
